Gone are the days of spending hours searching for the answer to a question, having to leave the house to meet someone new or even getting up to change the temperature in your home.
But technologically enabled convenience comes at a cost, says Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke: Now, most people tend to dislike activities that require effort even more than they used to. Working out or learning a new skill from scratch can feel more like a chore than something to enjoy. But you can train your brain to do — and like — these types of challenges, Lembke said on Monday’s episode of the “Diary Of A CEO” podcast.
Her advice: Make a granular and intentional plan for tackling your activity before you actually do it.
“If we wait till that moment to decide whether or not to do something that’s hard, we almost always choose not to do it,” said Lembke, author of “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence,” a New York Times bestseller. “But if we make a plan in advance, let’s say the day before that, ‘Tomorrow I’m going to get up at this time. I’m going to get my stuff together and I’m going to go to the gym,’ we’re much more likely to engage in that activity.”
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You likely already do this in other aspects of your life, like planning dinner for the week ahead of time or picking out your work clothes the night before, so you don’t run late. Preparation helps us “put the brakes on our short-term desires and project ourselves into the future to achieve our long-term desires,” Lembke said.
Having an accountability buddy can help: People tend to accomplish more when they have a partner, or group of partners, on a similar path. In couples, if one partner makes a healthier change, the other is likely to make the same positive change, found a 2015 study from University College London researchers.
Connecting friendship or socialization to your goals, like attending a workout class or a study group, “makes it much easier to do these difficult things,” said Lembke.
Financial psychologist Charles Chaffin, co-founder of the Financial Psychology Institute and a professor at Iowa State University, agrees with the buddy system approach, he told CNBC Make It on Dec. 23.
“Dry January is a great example,” Chaffin said. “If you do dry January with the people you go out drinking with, your chances of actually being successful go way up because you’re going through that with someone. You’re policing each other. You’re encouraging each other. Those are all really, really good things.”
‘A goal of moderation’
The path to achieving the hard thing — whatever that may be for you — likely won’t be enjoyable at first, Lembke noted. She used the metaphor of a balance scale, with pleasure on one side and pain on the other side. By getting up early and dedicating two hours to an uninterrupted study session, for example, you’re intentionally adding weight to the “pain” side of your scale.
A quick social media break would add some temporary weight to the “pleasure” side of the scale, but by sticking with your goal and pushing past the discomfort, you’ll get a longer-lasting boost of dopamine, she said.
If you slip up on your journey to meeting a goal, don’t be too hard on yourself, Lembke added. At the beginning of the year, people tend to set concrete, unattainable goals and then feel a lot of shame when they don’t strictly adhere to them.
Maybe you didn’t completely cut out sugar like you’d hoped, for example, but at least you ate more whole foods and upped your water intake. Progress is still progress, even if it isn’t perfect.
“For some, a better approach is sort of self-compassion and a goal of moderation,” said Lembke.
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